Episode 88: Grotesquerie Ray
John has three pairs of slippers. Right now, he's wearing a jacket wrapped around his feet. * Merlin has six different Carhartt caps, and it's rare that he can find one. * John ripped his pants jumping on stage in NYC, and could only find $500 jeans hand-stitched by some Italian grandmother. The only reasonable pants he could find were at Uniqlo, "Target for hipsters." This has prompted him to buy skinny jeans. ** A Falstaffian father: "I was shuffling around like a Gollum through the streets of Prague." * John is worried that he is verging into self parody. ** "None of these clothes are skinny enough for me anymore. They're all so blousey." ** It's hard to buy oversized clothes shen you are already an oversized person. But now we're living in this XXXL world. ** "You walk around looking like Damien Jurado all the time." ** "I look like a little boy who someone hit with a grotesquerie ray." * We try not to talk about food and fatherhood on the show, generally failing—MM ** "That's all I know now." —JR * The John of a year ago in skinny jeans would have looked like a blue ice cream cone. * "It's kind of like being a foxy 70-year-old woman. Its like, mostly you're a 70 year old woman.” —MM * Aging: Robert Redford now looks like a Chippendale couch. ** John displays an excellent British accent. ** As a rock star you're always gender bendering, but not all the way to "I'm your grandma" * The phases of Keith Richards: ** After ’82, looked like an old witch ** Then, a pirate ** A landjager ** Like a pocket sausage. ** He's 5"9 in prince boots! ** Like a cheroot that someone stubbed out in an ashtray. ** Maybe he will live forever. Maybe he's the one. * John hasn't had a mind altering substance in almost 20 years, but he resolutely refuses to live in a sober-ghetto of life, and so spends almost all of his time around people on drugs. ** Pharmaceutical drugs have produced new ways of "feeling like your hands are like two balloons" ** Salvia: it's big with a certain kind of William Gibson-loving cyber punk ** "I think you'd get a lot of people hooked on drugs if it was more like a Phillip k Dick novel” —MM ** "It's gonna be like Dune where everyone walks around with a tube in their mouth” — JR * John wonders: Why are my friends in middle age so attracted to this? ** "My relationships with these people are ham-strung—not because there's a gulf between us because I don't do drugs, but because there's a gulf between them and everyone!" ** "From I'm 22--what are my limits? To I'm 42--this is my pattern." * Trey Parker and Matt stone on LSD at the Oscars: the joke wears off when they have to sit in a chair for 4 hours surrounded by monster lizard people in really expensive clothes. It’s only cool to have done, it's not that cool to do. * "I picture myself at 23 years on on a couch with my 25th beer in my hand, and a pot pipe my other hand, a dip of chewing tobacco in my lip, and a cigarette burning in the ashtray, and an 8th of mushrooms wearing off in me, and I'm sitting there I like… "hmm I need something else." ** "I feel like I'm laying in this couch and I've got a shield on me and a garbage can lid on top and then blanket and then a silver blanket that keeps you warm in winter and then a big sign that says "don't touch." Like how many protections against feeling do I need?" * Thats why, the fifth time you climb the high, you have that moment where you said “I have my new band!" ** And I had a moment: "You know what? Jethro tull is going to be my new band. And its gonna be me. Jethro Tull is gonna be my band." * ~1:07:00- John once went to a strangers’ party that was a cool scene. He’s starting to come up on LSD, and no one is friendly. ** “Dog, you and me, we’re gonna get through this together. And the dog just walks off." ** John eventually walked through the woods and found another party and sat there stacking paperclips for another couple of hours. Then the cops came to bust the party, and John was so glad to see them. “At least I can talk to the cops!" *** “They wouldn’t leave you, like a dog.” -MM *** “Hey man, how’s it going out there? Lot of parties tonight?” JR, to the cops *** “Hey, I’ll talk to you guys. I mean, I’m not from here. Wanna see my ID?” -JR, to the cops. *** “Come look at my paperclips.” -MM **** “Yeah, wanna see what I’ve been doing? They’re over here. I had to do it kind of out of the way cause there was a lot of traffic through this party.” JR, to the cops. ** “For the next eight hours I’m just going to be chain-smoking Camel filters, stacking paperclips and trying to talk to any receptive pet, and just, like, hoping that the cops come by or hoping that someone interesting came by.” -JR ** This was back when “there was no back.” John just had his little bag, woke up at another party’s couch and charmed his way into a cup of coffee, and was on his way.